CCA CX10

CCA CX10, at all good shops now

CCA are no strangers here. They have crossed my path on a few occasions now. I have dissected a C4, C10, C10 Pro, and a C12. There were parellels to be drawn from all models. All are hybrids. All are cheap for what they offer. All have cheap, bland packaging and bare bones for accesories. There are no frills to be had here. The romance only happens when you push the shells into the ears. I hasten to say, that is not the case for the CCA C4. That was not a great experience. It was too bassy and screechy, and cost about the price of a chocolate bar. Nay, nay and thrice nay! We must push ourselves up the ladder slightly to get a feel for something with some quality.


They sent me these as a review model so I've not paid for them. CCA do 2 different one's - the CX4 and CX10. The 4 being based on the CCA C4 and the 10 on the CCA C10. Needless to say, I have avoided the CX4. I want to give you, kind reader, the chance to experience, at least vicariously, something worth reading about. Perhaps even, something worth a punt. In other words, you might be here because you might want to take the plunge into the icy waters of the Truly Wireless. I can tell you already that you won't be wasting your time here. I'll let you into a secret already ; the CX10 is a TWS worth your time. It is a TWS of it's time, and, for me, the TWS has come of age. At least for specific uses.

Unboxing

Very Important


I must confess to being an utter idiot! When the package arrived, I hurriedly set ot work on it. I have a couple of TWS buds already, so I couldn't imagine there being much difference between at least getting them to work. I had a brief look at the booklet supplied and put the CX10s to work. Nothing. Nowt! They are supposed to instantly go into pairing mode once taken from the case at the same time. No sound, no sign of led. It looked very much like a DOA. After 5 minutes of scratching my head I looked more carefully at the buds. They had almost see through tape over the connecting pins at the back of them. There was no connection reaching the buds and the bluetooth was not going to work like that! I peeled the tape off, put them back in the case and sure enough, on came the lights and the sweet Chinese lady started to whisper in my ear. Then it all went wrong again. The buds would stay on for a second and powered off. So near, and now I was failing again! Sensing a battery issue, I put them back in the case for an hour. Although the buds appeared to stay green throughout this process, clealrly they had run out of charge. After 15 minutes in the case I put them back on and, within a minute, low battery warning was being spoken to me. Please be aware that you are likely to come across the same problem if you buy these. I couldn't find any mention that there was tape to remove and it's quite difficult to see.


The only lights that you get are inside the charging box. This is the same on my 2 other TWS items. Nevertheless it's a pain. It means you have to trust that recharging is taking place. As expected the charging box will recharge the buds several times(4), and a usb charging cable is supplied for the box. The quoted battery life is 4 hours for the buds, in practice it will be much less, depending on the volume, the codec, the quality of the signal etc.




Once out of the box and in pairing mode, it's fairly easy to set up the CX10. I would force the phone to accept AAC, rather than SBC, when prompted that there could a problem with connectivity. So many useful tips for you! In truth, SBC is a poor audio quality codec. It requires much less power to run a stable coonection with, so your phone likes that and selfishly wants it. Bad phone! Naughty phone! I found that AAC is noticeably better sounding. You should not get dropouts from the CX10 if you put your phone in your pocket or are holding it in your hand. Therefore the near lossless AAC codec is for you. The lack of the aptX or LDAC codecs is not a cheapskate move on the part of CCA. Bandwidth is extremely limited on a TWS because the left carries all the information and it has to use a chunk of engine power to sync with the right bud and keep that connection strong. There's not much left over to give us that magical sound we all crave. Thankfully, the sound should be good enough using the twin weapons of AAC and Bluetooth 5.0. The newest Bluetooth tech has much better signal and stability than 4.2, so we are good.


Ok, so here you see a few of the photos regarding the fit. I think you'll agree, they look pretty well squashed in for a set of universals. I have been on a weeks worth of runs with the CCA. Nothing more than an initial adjustment was needed. The rest of the time I was able to concentrate fully on the pain of the run itself...

Sound Quality

I am a fan of the CCA C10 sound. It has bass, whilst not particularly tight, it is pleasant without being ridiculously bloated, and forcing the mids and highs to be turned up in competition, or, worse still, to be muffled and distant. There is a smoothness to the standard C10; so much so that I prefer it to the shinier, punchier C10 Pro. I am pleased to say that, if anything, the CX10 is an improvement on the C10. We have a slightly thinner, tighter bass but the refinement of the mids and highs is still there. I would be pleased if I was to purchase these as an equivalent priced wired model, that's how good they are! I never expected to say that for a TWS, certainly not this early on in the evolution of this genre. It took a budget king like CCA to do it. The sound stage is believably wide. I would be happy to recommend the CX10 for everything from Classical to Club; whilst I'm not a clubber, Eric Prydz' Count on Me conveyed all the excitment necessary. The volume goes to dangerous levels, even when out on the run. The isolation achievable should be enough for relatively quiet listening volumes. It's worth pointing out here that there is no volume adjustment on the gesture control; luckily there is a safety feature here. The CX10, on start up, will be at the 60% volume level. That should be more than enough on a standard walk or commute.

Vs. HiFiMan TWS600 & 800

I have 2 other models to compare the CX10 to.


The TWS600 retails for $49


and the 800 at $299


Sorry HiFiMan. Sound quality loses to the CX10 for both models. Bass in punchier than both the bass light 600 & 800. Detail(this could even be described as clarity) is slightly better on the 600 and slightly worse on the 800, which has been rolled back in the highs compared to the 600. On the 600 the sound signature is bass light, thin and sometimes screechy. This can be toned down with Sony Hybrid tips, but you'll still hear it. Foamies can muffle out some of the detail on the 600 and add some bass, and foamies are an absolute must on the 800 for a half decent bass, but you can do fine with the cheap tips supplied with the CX10 to get a decent all round sound from them. And that's before we even start on the fit issues with the HiFiMan TWS models. I need silicon wings to keep the 600s in, and after 5 minutes of running with the 800s, they're determined to shoot free, especially when they sense a busy road they can drop onto....

Conclusion

There are many erphones on the market. Some look good, but don't deliver. Some look awful, but sound good. Some are for specific tasks, (TWS, for exercising) and fail to do it properly. Some are built poorly or are unreliable. Some fit, but many don't fit well at all. I could go on and on. I often do, that's why this site is chock full of success and failure. Whoever is moving this brand, CCA, forward, is doing a very good job indeed. What criticism I can find of the CX10s are very few; the charging lights aren't very reliable, as they always seem to be on green for the buds. The battery life is small in use; perhaps 3 hours or so using a decent codec and moving about at normal volume levels, the case and box are cheap and cheerful. Everything else, in other words, the important stuff, like sound, fit, connection and looks; all of those can be given a cheerful thumbs up. 5 stars unreservedly from me. CCA has done us hifiers proud once again, and long may this honeymoon period last!

disclaimer: disclaimer: The CCA CX4 and CX10 were provided for purposes of review.

Unboxing / Packaging:
The CX10 comes shipped in a white lift top style box with the CCA logo on the front and model details on a sticker on the side. I found this a bit odd as the packaging on its less expensive sibling is more sophisticated and shows more attention to detail than does the CX10. Internal packaging is a bit better with the case in a plastic support and a small box hiding the cable and tips rather than those items being loose under the plastic tray like the CX4 was. The kit is also a dead ringer for its small sibling with three sets of silicone tips in small, medium, and large, a micro-usb cable for charging and the manual rounding out the kit.




Build/Fit:

Shells are a multi-part design with the bulk being resin bonded to a brass nozzle. The shell is comprised of a 4 major parts, a faceplate, main body (the bulk of the inner shell), an inner resin plate that attaches the nozzle, and the brass nozzle itself. Seems are well fitted but very visible and detract from the semi-custom shape of the earpieces. The Earpieces have 2 vents, one at the lower edge of the faceplate (a vertical oblong arrangement) and the other much smaller at the top edge along the junction of the faceplate and main body near where the model name is printed. The inner surface has a pair of charging pads that are slightly counter sunk in the resin to avoid contact with the ear. Nozzles have a distinct forward rake and a pronounced lip for tip retention. Insertion depth is fairly deep, but isolation is only average due to the size and venting.




Internals:

The CX10 uses a 7mm dual magnet dynamic driver for the lows, a pair of 50024 balanced armatures for the mids and a pair of 30095 armatures for the highs. Sensitivity is listed as 91dB/mW but no impedance is listed. I searched a good bit looking for what bluetooth chip was in use but was unable to find a definitive answer. It does support Bluetooth 5.0 but is limited to SBC and AAC with no support for AptX HD or LDAC which is a little disappointing considering the competition increasingly supports these protocols. The battery in each earpiece is listed as a 40mA lithium ion cell and my testing showed actual capacity to be roughly that as well. I found Bluetooth range to be good in open space, but easily defeated by walls (even cubicle walls). With AAC on, the CX10 had solid connectivity but in SBC mode cut-outs were fairly common. Gaming mode introduces a lower latency but connectivity was roughly between AAC and SBC and not being a big gamer, I didn’t really test it fully.




Case:

The case is a plastic clamshell design with CCA cast into the lid and a single micro-USB port on the right hand side. Inside the case there is a single LED indicator between the recesses for the two earpieces. The case itself houses a 400mAh lithium ion battery and charge circuitry. The LED lights red while charging and green when full charge is reached. During the charging process, if when disconnected the LED is red the case is between 0-30% charged, if yellow 30-70% and green = above 70%. It would be nice to have some indicator on the shell’s exterior for this as you have to open the case to see the charge state. I found battery life of the earpieces to be roughly 2.5 hours depending on listening volume.




Function/Controls:

When using the CX10, you have to take both earpieces out of the case at roughly the same time or it will connect in mono mode as they can be used as a single earpiece for phone conversations if desired. They have the familiar red/blue blink when pairing and then go to red /blue alternating on master (slower blink) and flashing blue on slave when paired. There is also an audible prompt for pairing and paired as well.

To turn them on or off when outside the case, touch and hold the face of each earpiece. 3 seconds should be enough to turn them on but to turn them off takes 6 seconds of constant contact with the face. Also if placed back into the case, the units will automatically power off and charge then power on when removed from the case.
Similarly quick taps of the face can be used to control playback during use. A single tap is play/pause or can be used to answer/hang-up calls. if you touch and hold the face plate the call is rejected or if no call is present and your device suports it, a press and hold will activate Siri. Two quick taps to the left is previous, two taps to the right is next. Three quick taps to the earpiece enters low latency mode for games or movie watching.


Sound:
I didn’t end up doing the normal FR chart here as I had problems getting the CX10 to behave wheile trying to do so as it consistently only gave 50% effort so I ended up with a disjointed mess instead of a normal looking FR. Not sure what the issue is as I tried my normal test setup and also tried with the Hiby R3 pro as a usb DAC from the test laptop as the middle man and got the same results both times. I threw a couple other TWS models at the test system to be sure and those all worked as expected. I think the issue is inherent to the chipset in the CX10 rather than with the measurement rigs as I also saw the same problem with its sibling the CX4 that uses the same chipset.



Bass:

Sub-bass is emphasized and has good depth and rumble, but can get a little loose at times much like its smaller sibling. Mid-bass is also emphasized with good slam, but here again a bit looser than it should be with more than a little bleed into the mids and some obstruction of detail due to the lack of control.


Mids:

The CX10 has more detail in the mids by far when compared to the CX4 but retains a similar signature with a dip in the lower mids and a climb again in the upper-mids/lower treble. Male vocals have good tonality and weight. Guitar growl is a bit sharper than the CX4 as well. Strings have a bit more realistic tone but still lack a bit of energy to be entirely realistic. Female vocals are a step forward of their male counterparts and have a bit more energy as well. This is a double edge sword as good recordings will do well but recordings on the hot side can get a bit fatiguing as a result.


Treble:

Lower treble continues the rise of the upper-mids before plateauing as it reaches the true treble. Treble is roughly equal in emphasis as the mid-bass hump. The highs are notably more detailed than its little brother but share a similar smoothing and stay away from being overly fatiguing. Snare rattle is good with sharp attack and cymbals have more energy than the CX4 but can be a little metallic at times. Extension is good with enough air and sparkle at the top to keep from feeling closed in.


Soundstage / Imaging:

Stage has good depth and is a bit deeper than it is wide. This is the biggest departure from its little brother which is all width and little else. The CX10 has some height and feels like a large auditorium or theatre. Seating the orchestra is fairly straight forward with front/back and side by side relationships easily heard. Instrument separation is good and helps in this respect and while come compression is evident in the lows, the fact that only frequencies below about 400Hz are being handled by the dynamic driver limits the impact that has. Imaging is good with movements fairly easily tracked and positions tightly defined. I did find the stage center a bit cleaner than the little brother as well.


Thoughts / Conclusion:

The CX10 doesn’t have a direct sibling in the KZ line. The Sa08 is probably the closest, but the CCA uses a dynamic driver for bass while the KZ uses an armature. I struggle with finding the value in the CX10 as it has limited connectivity options with no LDAC or AptX HD support, and shares too many features with the CX4 to ignore. While the sound signature is a bit more detailed, it still shares a similar signature and those who don’t like the way the CX4 sounds probably won’t appreciate the CX10 either. If the CX10 was $10 more than the CX4 it would be an easy recommendation, but with the CX10 commanding more than double the price of the CX4, I’m not sure the value proposition is still there. If you have a CX4 and want a more detailed version of it, the CX10 fits the bill, if you want a V shaped in ear for gym use, either the CX4 or CX10 will work, but the 10 will cost you a bit mor